Frank Corcoran

No, the question of word / music won´t go away. Or , more specifically, what text(s) should a composer set. Why ?
A young composer writes Lieder; the text leads, supports, offers form and shape and melodic thrust. Or she goes for choral settings. Ditto.
My ” MEDIEVAL IRISH LYRICS” for the then R.T.E.Singers was a success. ( It went also to Paris to the International Rostrum of Composers ; a little kudos encourages ) Also “HERR JESU CHRIST” for Choir. My very Opus one, ” DÁN AIMHIRGÍN” , used a mythic, Early Irish text. The distance I needed was there.
The problem is there when I come close to a contemporary poet´s words; no distance, mythic or temporal – or linguistic. ( “TWO MEDITATIONS” for Speaker and Orchestra offered its own solution to my using John Barth´s short texts through the very medium of a male speaking voice against orchestral instruments, also the one pitted against the mighty forces… And here , too, a little Paris kudos. With ” 5 LIRIC DE CHUID GHABRIEL ROSENSTOCK” for Soprano and Piano Trio ( Berlin 1979 ) only my naked expressionistic melos could erect the for me necessary distancing. Other examples of this composer´s shyness before and, well, respect for a contemporary poet´s preformed material abound. eg. Seamus Heaney´s ” MAD SWEENEY” ( Boston Musica Viva 2006 ) “saves” my sought distance through its Speaker pitted against Chamber Orchestra. et cetera.
Now I have come to the stage where I will use my own texts , if necessary. The 2009 ” EIGHT HAIKUS” for SS AA TT BB Choir was a successful distancing – my own composed haikus ( the texts are somewhere here below in a past log or blog ) gave the composer – me- an enormous palette of syllabic colours and spat building-blocks and merry melismata etc.
Today, it´s back to my initial problem of forty plus odd years ago ; I am composing “SIX LIEDER ” for Tenor and Piano.
This time, I squirm. How achieve , once again, distance ? Well, again I´ll write my own lied-texts; that haiku-form will offer the scaffolding. Thus:

FIVE HAIKUS AND A SCATTER by Frank Corcoran:

Five dogs or seven
Snarl in the cool evening air
Barking: ” Kill the Spring! ”

Who goes here ? – Summer !
My pen writes on white paper:
“Clarinets! Soft horns!”

Bits of sticky sleep.
My eye tries to see itself.
Morning birds chitter.

Suppose God is light ?
A mountain´s shadow purple ?
-Ciúnas, a h-anaim…

Whisper ” The sunset….”
It tiptoes through the window.
Well is this, then, death?

Five dogs or seven / Barking ” Kill our Spring!” / Eyes trying to see themselves / Whisper ” sun-set” !

It´s easy for the nimble fingers to talk and type about ” The Composer´s ” shaky ICH!” Too raw, often Yet, self-advertising´s your only man if noone else is fulfilling their duty of dissemination – what you would wish a publisher would normally be up to….
Take PARIS June 7th – 12th. Radio Telefís ´Eireann INTERNATIONAL ROSTRUM OF COMPOSERS : Three pieces For Orchestra ( ” Pictures From My Exhibition” ) . Take it. This composer then wrote : ” …. before it too is destroyed; in dying it throws up the bassoon´s final ostinati or an impassioned line for strings which leads nowhere…. ”
Or take “FAREWELL SYMPHONIES” RTE ” Prix Italia ” music entry 1982. Take it. Gently.

18 Feb. 2005 . RTÉ Living Music Festival . Ensemble Modern , conductor Sian Edwards , premiered the Frank Corcoran commissioned work, ” QUASI UNA VISIONE”. Fine. Here was a chamber orchestra with a difference , not a 19th. c. symphony orchestra at all, but a, well, differently balanced sound-group. eg. How balance its string quartet against 3 trombones? Or against 2 Horns and 2 Trumpets ? Plus, say, 3 Percussion ? I had to re-think the whole complex problem of balance, in fact. Tuttis ? – a major headache. Plus its double woodwind ? Great danger, little acoustic room for manoevre. Yes, compose chorally, sectionally, wispeens of lines and melodies; but handling massed groups was a nightmare.

MAD MARCH HAIKU :

” Glint of dragonflies
As the big orange-red sun
Sneaked shyly away. “

I had been at the Zagreb Biennale in the late seventies. 1983 it saw my APORTRAITOFTHEARTISTASAYOUNGMANWHOWANTEDTO….
for Actor and Taped Music which over ten years later morphed into “JOYCEPEAK – MUSIK” for West Deutscher Rundfunk .( This won the 1996 Studio Akustische Kunst Prize of WDR. )
While in Zagreb, my Croatian friends commissioned for IRASM my: ” Two Hardy Referentialists And The Debate On Expression in Music”. The question remains open: is music capable of expressing anything at all ? If so, what ?

” RHAPSODIC BOWING”

for 8 Celli Frank Corcoran ( 2010 )

Yes, I do know, there are those who rape the humble e-mail – even further disappointment ! Divide I up here and thus its myriad abusers into , very broadly enough, say :
1. I e-mail – but shortly before I , hung from my neck
by the left ironed pyjama leg , slip down side-ways from that closed – temporarily- lavatory lid, now closed hopefully for ever.

2. demand, nay, grab Cúchulainnish by a kerne´s hound´s hurley-ball´s churlish throat , me and my present e-mail a hush out in Kepler´s vast, hushed planetary glides and scoops.

3..

2. Because I expect and await and seek / sigh for love from a poor, poorest of glorious execute the e-mail quick.

See H. D. Grünefeld on :
www.nmz.de/online/skeptisches-vertrauen-portraetkonzert-frank-corcoran

Actually it was always “fun” , forming and shaping a radio-programme, a quickie or an epic longie , in whatever language. More for myself than any other I will recall some I made over thirtyfive odd years. “Stravinsky´s SACRE” was a big two hour job for Hessische Rundfunk in them very dark middle eighties. Jump to almost yesterday for a radio-beaut for Lyric Fm : ” Bach Came Through Borrisokane” where I proved the Leipzig Meister´s behind many a sean nós Slow Air ( – more anon on this shape-shifting act of musicology…. No answer from Irish Musikwissenschaftler, any. None. Why ? ) . For Norddeutscher Rundfunk´s ” PRISMA MUSIK ” these past few years I´ve been practising the gentle art of Radiophonic Analysis, an almost Hans Keller analysis of, say Beethoven´s Seventh , ( – was it his “Irish” ? – Really ? ) or Mozart´s c – minor Piano Concerto, or his heart-breaking g – minor String Quintet, and so on. I remember doing a lot of programmes – again those eighties – on traditional Irish music for the Bayerischer Rundfunk. Beginning of the nineties I recorded 6 programmes, ” La Musica dell´Isola Smeralda” for R.A.I. in Rome, including a few orchestral Corcoran works. Grand work for Bremen Radio also. W.D.R. commissioned all kinds of disparate programmes from me , from a large Irish radio-stew of political figures ( yes, I did interview Charlie Haughey for that, many other Irish voices , too ) entitled ” Die Grüne Insel – politische Stimmen ” on to themes closer to my heart like ” György Ligeti´s Frühe Chormusik” or ” Music As Religious Expression “, or “Webern´s Atonality”, or “Frank Corcoran – Self-Portrait” etc. Munich Radio commissioned my big ” Berkeley´s Philosophy ; Esse Est Percipi ! ” There was Sender freies Berlin and His Maestro´s Voice. Then in the mid-nineties they had my week-long NDR Afternoons presenting a grateful Hamburg public all the then recorded works of Charles Ives. I even made a self-portrait for the then German Democratic ( ! ) Republic´s Berlin Radio. To balance things, I then made another for the other crowd, R.I.A.S. Deutschland , too; I remember painting a large radiophonic canvas with my Fulbright Professor´s year 1989 – 1990 in the U.S. for DeutschlandFunk ( – in Cologne by the mighty Rhine where , a few years later, I could capture the wash and spume of that vast water in my “SWEENEY´S VISION” in 1997 ; two years later this won the premier Prix at the ( now in mortal danger from Sarkozy´s chop ) Bourges Festival. ) Back to Lyric Fm and ” James Joyce, the greatest Irish Composer ” and other jewels. With Tim Lehane on RTE Radio there was at least, I remember, ” Do You Call THAT Music !?” and my commentaries – performances of ” Frank Corcoran´s Irische Mikrokosmoi”. There was more, certainly . An archives is a grand thing. Must dig out old mss. old wounds bleed. old broadcasting joy. Ephemeralities ? Depends on your metaphysics – of sound, of time, of smoke, of artistic intent, of enjoyment plus comoposition and words and things and flights of radio-fancies . Yerra !
Oh , I will nearly not forget ” The Quiet Corner” a few sets of them, for RTE. Nor my Brahms Symphony for Hamburg ( which one ? ) . Nor Beethoven´s EROICA which is scheduled for broadcasting on, I think, March 20 coming. Plenty more. The radio liveth yet. The ear understands with it. Great etherial joy. Powerful time-stunts.

Actually it was always “fun” , forming and shaping a radio-programme, a quickie or an epic longie , in whatever language. More for myself than any other I will recall some I made over thirtyfive odd years. “Stravinsky´s SACRE” was a big two hour job for Hessische Rundfunk in them very dark middle eighties. Jump to almost yesterday for a radio-beaut for Lyric Fm : ” Bach Came Through Borrisokane” where I proved the Leipzig Meister´s behind many a sean nós Slow Air ( – more anon on this shape-shifting act of musicology…. No answer from Irish Musikwissenschaftler, any. None. Why ? ) . For Norddeutscher Rundfunk´s ” PRISMA MUSIK ” these past few years I´ve been practising the gentle art of Radiophonic Analysis, an almost Hans Keller analysis of, say Beethoven´s Seventh , ( – was it his “Irish” ? – Really ? ) or Mozart´s c – minor Piano Concerto, or his heart-breaking g – minor String Quintet, and so on. I remember doing a lot of programmes – again those eighties – on traditional Irish music for the Bayerischer Rundfunk. Beginning of the nineties I recorded 6 programmes, ” La Musica dell´Isola Smeralda” for R.A.I. in Rome, including a few orchestral Corcoran works. Grand work for Bremen Radio also. W.D.R. commissioned all kinds of disparate programmes from me , from a large Irish radio-stew of political figures ( yes, I did interview Charlie Haughey for that, many other Irish voices , too ) entitled ” Die Grüne Insel – politische Stimmen ” on to themes closer to my heart like ” György Ligeti´s Frühe Chormusik” or ” Music As Religious Expression “, or “Webern´s Atonality”, or “Frank Corcoran – Self-Portrait” etc. Munich Radio commissioned my big ” Berkeley´s Philosophy ; Esse Est Percipi ! ” There was Sender freies Berlin and His Maestro´s Voice. Then in the mid-nineties they had my week-long NDR Afternoons presenting a grateful Hamburg public all the then recorded works of Charles Ives. I even made a self-portrait for the then German Democratic ( ! ) Republic´s Berlin Radio. To balance things, I then made another for the other crowd, R.I.A.S. Deutschland , too; I remember painting a large radiophonic canvas with my Fulbright Professor´s year 1989 – 1990 in the U.S. for DeutschlandFunk ( – in Cologne by the mighty Rhine where , a few years later, I could capture the wash and spume of that vast water in my “SWEENEY´S VISION” in 1997 ; two years later this won the premier Prix at the ( now in mortal danger from Sarkozy´s chop ) Bourges Festival. ) Back to Lyric Fm and ” James Joyce, the greatest Irish Composer ” and other jewels. With Tim Lehane on RTE Radio there was at least, I remember, ” Do You Call THAT Music !?” and my commentaries – performances of ” Frank Corcoran´s Irische Mikrokosmoi”. There was more, certainly . An archives is a grand thing. Must dig out old mss. old wounds bleed. old broadcasting joy. Ephemeralities ? Depends on your metaphysics – of sound, of time, of smoke, of artistic intent, of enjoyment plus comoposition and words and things and flights of radio-fancies . Yerra !
Oh , I will nearly not forget ” The Quiet Corner” a few sets of them, for RTE. Nor my Brahms Symphony for Hamburg ( which one ? ) . Nor Beethoven´s EROICA which is scheduled for broadcasting on, I think, March 20 coming. Plenty more. The radio liveth yet. The ear understands with it. Great etherial joy. Powerful time-stunts.

Well, the composer´s ” I ” HAS a ” holy excuse ” ( – See my previous message to a carefully thankful cosmos ) . Uncork ! – Uncork what ? This sake ! Why ? It is because the poet sees : ” New year / New dew-drops!
” – Heavens ! The worth of words, heaving poor WHamlet´s whuge word-and-tone pile, wonder-and- piles a-plenty ! Whisper the vowel-shift and – whorls of Gabriel Rosenstock´s original ” Fís ” , his vow-vision leaf-meal ( – so whither MY choral whither ? Wrist ? Whist ? ) :
” Cactais / Tráthnóna Fomhair / Leamh, gan snua…. ”
I bow my composer´s nib before pith.